The communicative turn in planning theory and it's implications for spatial strategy formation: P Healy

The context:
widespread consciousness these days that economic and political orders have changed substantially. According to Healy places have now seen to have fragmented into an amalgam of bits and pieces, niches and nodes. It reflects the disintegration of the economic and governance relations relied on past war.

Public policy making as commutative argumentation:
There are always new theories and interpretations, new policy provides and management tricks, but as Kuhn has shown us mainly small contributions add up to a change in our thinking. Producing what he called the paradigm shift. As he discusses a new wave of ideas focusses on how we get to discuss issues in the pubic realm.

A communicative approach to spatial strategy formation:
most of the spatial and environmental planning activity is focussed on managing the smaller finer grain of change in local environments. this presents some problems in certain projects as it may lock the flow of planning. they may also serve to enrich the power and interests of powerful groups making it harder for certain individuals. The planning literature already referred to is beginning to provide us with interesting ways of thinking. they are ordered in 5 headings:

1. Where is discussion to take place?
2. in what style should it take place?
3. how can ideas and arguments be sorted out?
4. how can a new strategy be sorted out?
5. how to get them to agree on a strategy?

Arenas for argumentation:
Traditional way of discussing where policy making takes place is to consider all arenas and allocate rights to be represented and heard in the arenas.

Scope and style of discourse:
Another set of considerations concerns what gets discussed and how. In planning we used to call this stage the survey stage. It involves opening out issues, explore what they mean to different people. This is a critical and delicate operation.

Creating a new discourse:
broadly based discussion takes place in defined stages, before or after strategies have been created.

Agreement and critique:
objective of strategic inclusionary argumentation on urban features is a rich policy discourse. But there will always be some people that will be unhappy.